


no honor for the damned

by nickofhearts



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 18:51:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11492517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickofhearts/pseuds/nickofhearts
Summary: Noctis dreams of impossibilities.





	no honor for the damned

Noctis woke up, only he wasn't really _awake,_ was he?

He got out of bed, pushing open the hotel room door, except it didn't open out into the stairwell that led into the café, it opened into Insomnia, _burning in ruins._ Noct gasped, running past each scene that was frozen in time like the most horrible art installation: the Old Wall, locked in combat with daemons taller than most city buildings; Luna, standing with a Kingsglaive as they faced down something more monster than man; Drautos, running _his father_ through with a great gigantic sword—

"What the _fuck,_ " Noctis screamed.

It was only then that he looked past the scenes of people and places he _should have known,_ but didn't, not in these contexts, to the wider space of the—dream? It had to be, it couldn't be anything else. He was standing on a platform whose edges crumbled off into _nothingness,_ and as he looked to the emptiness beyond his immediate vicinity, he saw a great whale swim leisurely past him, its body bloody with wounds that should have meant its death.

"What _is_ this?"

 _Hello, Noctis,_ a voice hailed him, echoing eerily in the space of the dream; it made the hairs on the back of Noctis' neck stand up. The man's eyes were like liquid shadows, on a face younger than Noctis himself. _Your life has taken a turn, has it not? The city that was your home burns to the ground, and the Crystal that was your birthright serves the Kings of Lucis no longer, stolen by your enemy. For this, I have chosen you and drawn you into the Void._

_I am the Outsider, and I offer you my Mark._

-

Noctis raced through the Niflheim base, blinking past guards before they'd even registered his presence, slipping through shadows. He could see the paths each soldier would take before they'd taken them, as if _he_ was master of all their fates. One step closer here, and Noctis could blow them right off the landing of the walkway, to smash to their deaths below.

It made him giddy, this dark power that was nothing like the magic of the Crystal.

The brand of the Outsider burned on the back of his hand each time he called upon it, a familiar pain now, though Noctis had felt it cut him to his _soul_ when the Outsider marked him.

Noctis peered over the landing, where two MT units lay in a broken shambles on the ground.

 _Fascinating,_ he heard the Outsider's voice echo in his mind. _Magic and technology melded with breathing flesh, but no soul at the helm to steer it. What lengths you living creatures go to in your quest to murder your own kind._

"What?" Noctis asked, but there was no answer.

-

"You're _losing_ yourself," Gladio snarled at him when Noctis blinked back into camp, startling Prompto enough with his sudden appearance that Prompto dropped the gun he was cleaning with a yelp, fumbling it out of his hands.

Noctis had _gotten_ the intel they needed—the Crystal had been taken to Gralea by the 'Imperial Chancellor,' and was being studied by the scientists there for the secrets of its magic, whatever they hoped to glean of its provenance or what powers could be harnessed by its possession. Noctis didn't fucking understand what Gladio's problem was, why he couldn't even _look_ at Noctis now when all Gladio had ever demanded of Noctis was for him to be _better._

He _was_ better, he'd just infiltrated a Nif base by _himself,_ and Gladio seemed more upset now than when Noctis had been reluctant to get out of bed until noon.

"I'm taking back what's _mine,_ " Noctis growled in return. "If you're unhappy with the way I'm doing it—"

"That _Mark,_ " Gladio made a gesture vaguely in the direction of Noctis' hand without looking anywhere near it. "It's _unnatural._ It goes against the very fabric of _existence,_ or have you forgotten the stories?" Gladio crossed his arms, gazing off into the distance as if he was thinking about being anywhere else than within ten meters of his recently heretical prince. "Maybe you weren't _paying attention._ "

"It's all I've _got,_ " Noctis answered. "So fuck you, Gladio, why don't you go _suck a dick._ "

He stormed off to the other side of camp, angrily slamming the cooking implements around until he'd found the largest knife, and then started hacking apart the vegetables Ignis had prepared for dinner with a gusto that expressed all his irritation and frustrated annoyance with his _Shield._ It probably wasn't how Ignis had _wanted_ them done for dinner, but Noctis was beyond caring about _that._

-

It wasn't enough just _knowing_ where the Crystal was being kept however; they also needed a way to it through leagues of enemy territory.

Noctis sighed, leaning back in the fold-out chair by the campfire. He and Ignis had been going over it since dinner, but still hadn't come up with a solid plan. Noctis finally said what they were both thinking: "I could get aboard an airship by myself and stay hidden, no problem."

"Your highness—"

"I know, Specs, you're my advisor, but you've gotta let me out of the nest sometime." He cracked a lopsided smile that Ignis returned weakly.

"Be _careful,_ Noct. Gladio might be overenthusiastic in his objections, but they do have a basis in fact. We know little of the Outsider other than that he predates the Astrals, perhaps even the making of Eos."

Noctis shrugged. "I don't think he _cares_ what I do, other than that it's _interesting._ "

-

Everything had been going well— _too_ well, probably, because it all went to shit in a matter of moments.

 _Gladio,_ Noctis thought to himself. _You fucking traitor,_ as he was dragged out of the corner he'd been hiding in like they _knew_ that's where he'd be, biding his time until the airship landed. He went along with it peaceably for the moment, not familiar enough with the area to be sure he'd be able to blink himself somewhere they couldn't follow or find him.

He looked up when the Imperial Chancellor himself appeared. "My, _my,_ what have we here?"

Well, that would save some time. Noctis grinned, then melted into _shadow._ He was a thing of claws and menace, formless and untouchable by steel or bullets, and _he_ tore the Chancellor of Niflheim asunder, screaming out his rage.

-

"Oof," Noctis protested, when the next thing he knew, he'd been tumbled into the Void again. He landed hard on one of the floating rock pieces that drifted through it idly, time no longer a concern in this place-that-wasn't-a-place.

Ardyn, who wasn't _dead,_ though Noctis had torn him into _pieces,_ murmured too-loudly into the silence: "This isn't the Beyond."

The Outsider was sat on nothing, watching them both. "This is the Void, Keeper of Souls. You trespass upon realms you do not understand."

While Ardyn argued his point with a _god_ , Noctis snuck around him, then stabbed him through the heart, striking true with the strange collapsable sword the Outsider had gifted him since Noctis could no longer call his own. It made no difference, even when Noctis twisted the sword as he tugged it back out and stabbed it in again, through the ribs and then once more through the space where Ardyn's heart _should_ have resided.

He'd heard Niflheim's Chancellor lacked the organ, but surely, that couldn't _actually_ be true? Noctis looked to the Outsider for help.

"A ritual to undo a ritual done," the Outsider answered, and Noctis didn't _quite_ understand it, but all the pieces were there.

The platform they were on was, _coincidentally,_ the same one that held the odd stone slab where the _Outsider_ had been made—a story that'd chilled Noctis to the bone—and Noctis used his powers to knock Ardyn back onto it, feeling the mark on his hand _burn_ as he called upon it to hold the Chancellor still and unmoving.

Noctis cut Ardyn's throat in a mimicry of a sacrifice, and watched the blood spill out black against the ancient structure.

This time, there was naught left of the Chancellor but flakes of ash scattering slowly into the Void.

-

Noctis trembled, wavering on his feet. "Is it _done?_ " he asked the god. "Is that all?"

The Outsider hovered close, startlingly close when he'd been so careful to keep a distance ever the while, and he _touched_ Noctis when he'd never done that before either, cold cold fingers against Noctis' cheek, burning like the brand on his hand. The Outsider answered not in words but a _kiss_ , and Noctis tasted the fall of _worlds_ on his breath, saw it behind closed eyelids. 

Mortals were not _meant_ for the touch of gods, and Noctis woke screaming.


End file.
